


Come As You Are

by ProseApothecary



Category: Crashing (UK TV)
Genre: Closet angst with a happy(ish) ending, Dinner Parties, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 21:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21344884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProseApothecary/pseuds/ProseApothecary
Summary: Sam looks at his phone. “Lulu’s hosting a come-as-you-are party.” He pauses, unzips his shark onesie and chucks it on to the bed, so that he’s just in his briefs. “If anyone asks, this is what I was wearing when I got the invite.”“What?” he asks Fred’s bemused face. “Can’t disappoint the ladies. Or lads,” he adds thoughtfully.Fred looks down at his too-baggy sleep shirt and boxer-clad legs. He picks up the onesie. “As long as I was wearing this.”Sam tilts his head and smiles. “You know, if you wanted to wear my clothes, you just had to ask.”
Relationships: Fred Patini/Sam
Comments: 8
Kudos: 141





	Come As You Are

Sam looks at his phone. “Lulu’s hosting a come-as-you-are party.” He pauses, unzips his shark onesie and chucks it on to the bed, so that he’s just in his briefs. “If anyone asks, this is what I was wearing when I got the invite.”

“What?” he asks Fred’s bemused face. “Can’t disappoint the ladies. Or lads,” he adds thoughtfully.

Fred looks down at his too-baggy sleep shirt and boxer-clad legs. He picks up the onesie. “As long as I was wearing this.”

Sam tilts his head and smiles. “You know, if you wanted to wear my clothes, you just had to ask.”

Sam’s clothes smell of hair gel and a deodorant that men almost universally agreed to stop wearing in the early 2000s. If Fred had the option, he’d rather be taking them off than putting them on. But he has a feeling this is the only way Sam’s going to let him out of going in his underwear.

“If you wanted me to wear your clothes, you just had to ask,” Fred retorts.

Sam gives a little bitten-off grin that Fred’s come to realise is an admission of guilt. “Maybe you should try it on now. So you know it fits.”

Fred stands up and pulls the blue onesie on, zipping it up the front.

Sam grips the edges of the hood and pulls it up, pulling Fred into a kiss in the process.

When Fred arrives, Kate’s already there, wearing business casual and looking very pleased to see him.

She pats the seat next to her and Fred slides in.

“Lulu’s late,” she says. “For her own party.”

“…I think we’re early.”

“By five minutes. That’s practically late.” She pauses, frowning. “Isn’t that Sam’s onesie?”

Fred is saved from answering by the arrival of Lulu and Anthony, laden with Mexican takeaway.

“Fred!” says Lulu, dumping the food on the table and sitting next to him. “Look at you! Sexiest guy here, easily.”

“Rude,” says Anthony, sitting opposite. “And unnecessary.”

“Well,” Lulu says, motioning to Anthony’s uniform, “look at what you’re wearing.”

“You came into my work to invite me personally. Just so, and I quote, I’d ‘have to wear that terrible shirt.’”

“Didn’t think you actually would. Are they all that tight, or did you specifically ask for a size too small?”

“Keep in mind you’re wearing _emoji pyjamas_.”

Lulu points to a sad face on her sleeve and tries to imitate it.

Anthony shakes his head, smiling.

Kate looks exceedingly grateful when Colin arrives in his gardening gear and Melody follows in a paint-splattered smock.

“Melody!” Lulu says. “Can’t believe you actually followed the theme. Full marks for participation.”

Melody looks at her blankly. “What theme?”

Sam’s arrival, Fred assumes, is purposefully late. He always likes to make an entrance.

And he does. Lulu wolf whistles as soon as he comes in.

“_Wish _I could return the favour,” Sam tells her, surveying her PJs.

“We couldn’t all come in lingerie.”

“Course not,” says Sam. “We wouldn’t want to overwhelm poor Katie. She’s already scandalised by you wearing pyjamas to dinner.”

He winks at Kate. Kate returns a glare.

Sam slips into his chair, and his foot nudges against Fred’s. Again and again.

It takes Fred an embarrassing amount of time to realise that Sam is doing it on purpose, and his foot is not, in fact, constantly in the way.

Fred, going quite pink, reaches for the flatbread. Shame-eating is always a good option.

“_Ow,” _he says as Lulu swats his hand away.

“Wait for the other guests.”

“Other guests?”

“It’s been a bit of a drought since Will, and as your friends-”

“I wasn’t involved in this,” Anthony jumps in.

“Me neither,” chorus Kate and Melody.

“I don’t know what happening,” Colin says.

Sam frowns. “Me neither. Did you guys buy our Virgin Mary an inflatable boyfriend? Without my input?”

“-we decided you needed a push back into the dating pool,” Lulu finishes.

Sam’s eyes widen as Fred has a mini panic attack.

“Oh,” says Fred. “I mean that’s very nice, but I’m really not looking for-”

“His name’s Mika, he’s almost as nerdy as you, and-”

Lulu’s phone beeps.

“Be right back,” she says, heading downstairs as soon as she checks it.

Sam meets Fred’s eyes for a second before looking down at his plate.

Fred does not have good feeling about this.

Mika has a mop of curly hair and glasses which he pushes up his nose every minute or so.

Fred is very aware of this, because Lulu successfully rearranged everyone so that they could sit next to each other, squished together at the end of the table.

Anthony stands up. “Let’s start with drink orders.”

Fred asks for a virgin Daiquiri, because it seems like the best way to assure Sam of his lack of intentions.

“Guys,” Anthony says, “all I made were Margaritas. You can have a Margarita, or water.”

“Live a little, Fred” Lulu says. “He’ll have Sex on the Beach.” She leans over to Mika conspiratorially and adds, “It’s ten minutes from here.”

Mika flushes. Up come the glasses.

“She’s thinking of the sewerage outlet,” Sam says. “The beach is an hour away.”

“…Margaritas it is,” Anthony says.

It’s not long before Anthony returns with the drinks.

Sam finishes his within a minute. Fred is not far behind.

Lulu would have them both beat, except that she gets distracted in the middle of drinking.

“Oh, Fred I almost forgot,” Lulu says. “Mika has a spare ticket to one of those Shakespeare in the Park things. So I told him how you’re the only person I know who has a crush on Hamlet-”

“Had,” corrects Fred. “Past tense. High school.”

Mika, who, Fred notices, has been somewhat cornered into this invitation, says “You’re welcome, if you want.”

Fred stumbles through some excuse about work being crazy, cringing at how fake it sounds, even as he says it.

Luckily, Mika is either very gracious, or not remotely interested in Fred, because he happily moves on to talking about theatre, and art, and music, and all manner of things in between.

It would be a pleasant conversation. In any other context.

Sam doesn’t look annoyed anymore. He’s watching with a kind of sad resignation. The kind Fred feels when Animal Planet insists on showing lion-gazelle chases.

He nudges Sam’s foot under the table and tries to give him an _I’m sorry our friends are trying to get me to sleep with someone other than you_ look, although he’s not sure exactly how to do that.

Sam stands up immediately.

_Wrong move._

“I should head off. 8am house showing tomorrow.”

“Me too, actually,” says Mika, looking at his phone. “I have to open the store early.”

Fred is about to make an excuse to follow Sam, when Lulu interjects. “Fred can walk you to the bus stop.”

Fred sticks his hands in his pockets, willing the bus to come.

“Sorry,” he says, “about tonight. Lulu’s desperate to set me up but I’m, um, kind of already seeing someone.”

“Right,” Mika says knowingly. “The angry blonde.”

Fred’s eyes dart to him. “Did someone tell you that, because-”

“No. He just seemed very…”

“…Protective?” Fred supplies.

“Mm. Something like that. You know,” Mika says. “I _can_ actually face the bus alone. If you want to reassure him that I’m not actually whisking you away to a shitty Croydon apartment.”

“You sure?” asks Fred, already backing away.

“Go for it.”

He knocks twice before opening the door, grateful that Sam never got around to installing a working lock.

Sam’s facing away from him, curled up on the double bed. When Fred sits up in bed, Sam follows, looking tired and bleary-eyed. He’s changed into Fred’s sweatshirt, and it makes something unfurl in his chest.

“What happened with Mika?” he asks, face carefully blank.

Fred gives him a look. “_Nothing._”

“Why not?”

Fred is really not in the mood for this. “Can we skip the part where you’re mad? Tonight wasn’t exactly fun for me either.”

“M’not mad,” Sam says, and the words come out too fast and too sharp. He takes a breath. “I’m not mad. Just curious. Why not?”

Fred stares at him. Clearly, he’s wildly misinterpreted the last few weeks. He looks to Sam for clarity, but Sam looks just as lost. And nervous, he notices now, fingers curling in the floral doona.

“I was under the impression,” Fred says, “That I already had a boyfriend.”

A smile flickers on and off Sam’s face. “We never talked about it. Exclusivity.”

“I don’t want to date other people,” Fred says definitively.

“How can you not?”

Fred doesn’t know how to answer that. Because he can barely handle one relationship sometimes. Because, when he thinks back on past relationships, he feels like he was playing a character. Because the thought of Sam dating anyone else makes him break out in hives. _Oh God_, Fred thinks. _Is that what Sam wants?_

“I’m just saying,” Sam continues. “You’re barely dating one person. We’re only in a relationship in this fucking…plasterboard two-by-four.”

_Which is why I’m going to suggest we see other people. While you’re wearing a shark onesie. Just to double down on the humiliation._

“I thought,” Fred chooses his words carefully, “that was what you wanted.”

“It was. It is. But you’ve gone through this all before. You could be with someone, properly. In a telling-their-friends, meeting-their-parents, holding-hands-at-Shakespeare-in-the-bloody-Park way.”

“Sam-”

“I thought,” Sam says, voice getting tighter “that everything would be fixed, when Will wasn’t in the picture. When you weren’t seeing anyone else. But I just keep thinking, maybe you would be happier if you were.”

As soon as his brain catches up, Fred cups Sam’s cheek. “Sam, hey, I’m happy. I’m really fucking happy. I don’t need PDAs, or-or skywriting, or big announcements. Watching romcoms with you in a bedfort works for me.”

He’s not sure how much longer it’s going to work for Sam, who makes his presence known in every room, personality bleeding over his edges. But that’s a conversation for another day.

At any rate, in the moment, Sam’s brow smooths out, corner of his mouth quirking up. He pulls Fred into a hug, and, within the minute, he’s breathing slower, and softer. Fred tightens his arms around Sam’s middle, feeling the warmth seep from his sweatshirt.

“By the way,” Fred says on minute two. “This room is bigger than a two-by-four. As a real estate agent, you should probably know that.”

Sam huffs a laugh and pulls back. “By the way, _you_ can’t ask Anthony for a virgin Daiquiri. That’s just lime juice. As an adult, you should probably know that.”

“See?” Fred says. “This is why I need you.”

“Oh you do,” Sam pulls him into a kiss. “Desperately.”


End file.
